Customer Service

By Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Your dog is afraid of crows. You don’t know why. What are you going to do about it? Learn to speak dog, that’s what. So you order the how to speak dog set and wait as your dog looks anxiously out the window. Your dog is suffering, you yell at the voice on the other end of the help center when the how to speak dog set arrives and you can’t figure out how to make it work.

Finally, they send you a replacement; you put it on. You ask your dog, “What’s up with the crows?” but all your dog does is give you a small whine, a blank stare and a nervous wag of his tail.

Of course you don’t understand what your dog is trying to communicate: the how to speak dog set is not the same as the how to speak human apparatus. You order that, medium dog sized, from the same company, of course, like you have any choice.

You’re beginning to wonder if this is all some sort of scam: the reviews of the company are nothing but terrible, but your dog doesn’t even want to leave the house anymore. He’s in anguish, you’d be a monster if you didn’t do anything you could to help him. You order, even if it means paying extra for the overnight delivery.

Despite paying so, so much for the overnight delivery, the gear doesn’t arrive for a week, and it’s obviously been used: the box is crumpled and held together with tape. Of course the apparatus doesn’t work, no matter how loudly and slowly you speak to your dog. He just keeps biting at the strap while the receiver in your ear keeps repeating its translation, “Why are you doing this to me? Am I a bad dog now?”

You call the help center; they put you on hold for one hour and seventeen minutes. Perhaps they think you’ll give up, or drop dead of a stroke, but you’re tougher than that. When it’s finally your turn you demand to speak to the manager.

“Do you really,” the person on the other end of the line asks, “want to do that?” Your dog is still in such distress; you’ve spent all this money on useless crap, all they want to offer you is company credit you can only use on their useless crappy products. Damn straight you want to speak to the manager.

Instead of giving you the manager, the phone disconnects.

In the middle of writing the most scathing review Amazon has ever witnessed your doorbell rings. You’re not in the mood; you pretend nobody is home and hope they’ll go away. Instead they keep ringing the doorbell over and over and over. Instead of barking your dog has his ears down. He’s clearly terrified: he’s actually whimpering. Your dog does not deserve this!

You fling the door open. “What?” you shout, but all that’s there is a crow.

No, there’s more than one crow. There are a lot of crows. More fly down every minute, from who knows where. “You asked to speak to the manager,” the crow says. “I’m the manager.”

There are an unimaginable number of crows before you, cawing and making clicking sounds. Some of them are already tapping on the windows. Some of them are already in the house. One of them is in front of your dog, who is trying to make himself as small as he possibly can be.

“Hi Nico,” you hear the crow say to your dog. “Are you fully satisfied with your purchases? Would you like to fill out a survey?”

Through the apparatus, you hear your dog say as plaintively as possible, “I love your products! I don’t want a refund! Please don’t hurt us!”

The crow in front of you looks up at you. “Did you get that, Mr. Flores? That was your dog Nico, and from the expression on your face I’m sure you could understand every single word he said. The equipment seems to work just fine, wouldn’t you agree? Is there anything else you need?”

The crows get louder and louder, a wave about to crest upon your house.

“No,” you mumble.

The crow cocks its head. “Are you sure? Would you be interested in filling out a brief survey? We take customer satisfaction very seriously.”

You fill out the survey. The crows leave. You know you are going to be missing several shiny things in your house, but you are not going to worry about that.

“Nico,” you say. “What did you buy?”

“I’m a good dog,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

—

Hugh Behm-Steinberg

His prose can be found in X-Ray, The Offing, Joyland, Western Humanities Review, Heavy Feather Review and Pank. His short story "Taylor Swift" won the Barthelme Prize from Gulf Coast, and his story "Goodwill" was picked as one of the Wigleaf Top Fifty Very Short Fictions. A collection of prose poems and microfiction, Animal Children, was published by Nomadic Press. He teaches writing and literature at California College of the Arts.